It's been a long time since I caught up on logging my travels on this page. Let's try and fix that problem.

In January, I visited a friend in Grand Rapids and we drove a circuitous path branching out toward the east on a day drive originating in that city.  The goals were to clinch US223, parts of I-75 from Toledo to Flint, and Michigan Highway 57. We clinched those routes in the order listed. I'm always amazed at how much snowier Michigan is than Illinois, being downwind of the lake-effect snow machine powered by Lake Michigan.

In April, I made a 3-day trip out of clinching US Route 35 and Interstate 79. Well, that was the original plan; I added a fourth day to the mix so that I could spend a day with a friend who lives along US Route 35 in Ohio. The first and second nights were spent on the east side of the Dayton area. As you can probably tell, going southeastward on US Route 35 came first. Clinching that route planted me in the middle of West Virginia, putting me in the perfect position to start going north on Interstate 79. Interstate 79 ends in Erie, Pennsylvania. The third night was spent in Erie. The last day involved me going back home toward the west, mainly on Interstates 90 and 80, but with some clinching of Ohio state highways sprinkled in.

In early July, I drove north through Wisconsin to northeastern Minnesota. I stayed in Menomonie, Wisconsin the first night, after driving on various state highways in the Driftless Region and western areas of Wisconsin. The destination on Day 2 was Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and I got there by driving north in westernmost Wisconsin and through Duluth. Day 3 was a sightseeing and hiking day, and I even jumped into a couple of lakes. It seemed like the right thing to do in the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" on a humid day when the temperature pushed to 90 degrees. Day 4 was the start of my drive back south toward home. I went south through St. Cloud and the Twin Cities to drive US Route 52 between St. Paul and Decorah, Iowa. I stayed near Decorah that night, and then I did some sightseeing around Decorah on the morning of Day 5. On this final day, I took US Route 52 to Dubuque and then did a beeline toward home. I stayed on US Route 52 from Twin Cities to Dubuque because I have been working on driving the entire length of that route in the past two years. Two other 2024 trips netted me the mileage of US Route 52 southeast of Illinois. This trip, though, allowed me to finish my Wisconsin shield gallery except for one little route, and it marked the start of my endeavor to try and complete a Minnesota shield gallery. Minnesota's shield gallery will need a few more years to complete.

In late July, I went to see a friend in Alabama. On the way, I started taking photos of Missouri highway markers, focusing on the southeast portion of that state. It will take a few more years to finish Missouri's shield gallery. In 2025, I finished Wisconsin, but I started Minnesota and Missouri. Two other Midwestern states will turn into photo safari locations for me, soon, too. On the way south, I stayed in Olive Branch, Mississippi, and I drove all of Interstate 22. While staying in Alabama, a day drive north to Nashville allowed me to explore some of Tennessee. On the way north, I drove US Route 412 from Interstate 65 to Interstate 55. I stayed in Poplar Bluff on the way north. My last day's route was far from direct, though I did eventually get home that day. I drove all of Missouri Route 106 westward before starting to head northeastward. I was impressed at how rugged and forested the landscape was--it's not what I expected from a Midwestern states. I know about the Ozarks to some extent, but I didn't expect that ruggedness of the landscape to pervade that far toward the north.

In late September and early October, I took the longest road trip of my life so far. I was gone for 17 days.  The kicker is that I didn't drive in a circuitous path; I drove to Los Angeles and flew home. Here's what happened day by day:​

1. I didn't want to pay for a toll transponder, so I shunned the tollways heading north to Milwaukee. I-43 north to US Route 10. The first goal was to drive US Route 10 west of Lake Michigan. The first night was outside of St. Paul.
2. I continued west on US Route 10 to its end on the west side of Fargo. Then I switched gears to driving US Route 52 northwest to Minot, North Dakota. I started feeling kind of sick this day. Minot would be home to the CVS pharmacy where I stocked up on cough and cold remedies.
3. The morning was spent finishing the last piece of US Route 52. Or, this is what should have been the last piece of US Route 52-- a 7-mile portion was closed in July for a construction detour, so the bit just south of I-90 hasn't been clinched by me yet. But I digress. After reaching Portal, ND, home of the Canadian border crossing where US Route 52 ends, I cut west on State Highway 5 to US Route 85 south. Lunch was in Williston, and then I opted for a direct route to Billings, Montana. This involved driving a piece of Interstate 94 west of Glendive, which was the only piece of Interstate 94 I was missing at this point.
4. Day 4 was a rest day in Billings, Montana. Since it rained all morning, I used the morning to do laundry and use the hotel's exercise room. Then I got lunch at a surprisingly swanky brewery and I spent the afternoon walking around Zoo Montana.
5. I drove Interstate 90 west to Spokane, stopping at various gas stations to fill up on hot herbal tea to soothe my throat.
6. I drove US Route 2 west from Spokane to its western end in Everett. Then, I had a mission to pick my wife up at the Seattle Airport, so that she could join me for the remainder of the trip. We stayed in Auburn, Washington this night, and for the next night.
7. We drove to Mount Rainier National Park-- specifically to the Paradise area on the south slope of the mountain.
8. Interstate 90 east to Spokane, then US Route 2 east to Kalispell. Highway 18 ended up blocked by a stalled car in a construction zone, preventing all movement on the highway. This morning blunder set us behind by over an hour, leading to a harrowing drive in the pitch blackness of rural Montana east of Libby. I counted 11 deer in the right of way that could have easily destroyed my rental car-- and those are just the ones I spotted with my own eyes. We pulled into Kalispell pretty late.
9. Glacier National Park was the feature on this day. We hiked to Avalanche Lake and drove the entirety of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. We drove down US Route 89 to US Route 2 east, and stayed in Cut Bank, Montana.
10. First I had to cut north to the north end of Interstate 15. That put me in position to drive Interstate 15 from end to end. On this day, we got as far south as Pocatello, Idaho, where we had to do laundry. Woohoo.
11. Continuing southward on Interstate 15 to Las Vegas.
12. We enjoyed Las Vegas. Mainly we enjoyed the Meow Wolf installation, but we walked around the strip for a while, too.
13. Finishing Interstate 15 southward, turning around at the Mexican border to capture a piece of Interstate 5 south of Anaheim. We went north on Interstate 5 to stay in Anaheim for predictable reasons.
14. This was a visit to the Disney parks in Anaheim.
15. This was a much-needed rest day after walking around the Disney parks. I slept very little, went to one of my favorite breweries, and checked into the next hotel as early as possible so we could take a nap. That night we returned the rental car right after dinner at a very yummy vegan restaurant.
16. This was the day we went to Universal Studios Hollywood.
17. Got to Burbank Airport around lunchtime, and we flew back home.

That sums up my travels for this year. What's going to happen next year? Who knows at this point!

In October, I embarked on a trip to New Mexico, passing through Nebraska and Colorado on the way there.  I passed through Lubbock, Texas, and through Oklahoma on the way home.  Each day looked like this:

• October 5: Head west on US Route 34 to Lincoln, Nebraska. This included driving all of US Route 34 in Iowa.
• October 6: Continue west on US Route 34 to Brush, Colorado. Took a detour northeast on I-76 to Sterling so I could see the southwestern end of US Route 138. Then continued west on US Route 34 to Interstate 25 near Loveland, Colorado.
• October 7: Do some hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park to break up the driving days. I hiked up Deer Mountain and went to the Alpine Visitor Center.
• October 8: Drive south from Loveland to Santa Fe on I-25. 
• October 9: Spend time in the Santa Fe area, visiting Bandelier National Monument and the state capitol building.
• October 10: Drove a loop from Santa Fe to Durango and then down to Albuquerque.
• October 11: Head south on I-25, then east on US Route 82 to Lubbock, Texas.
• October 12: See McKenzie Park in Lubbock. Drive all of I-27.
• October 13: Drove US Route 82 and I-44 to Oklahoma City, then I-40 to some local highways northward to Tulsa.
• October 14: Spent the day in Tulsa
• October 15: Drove home on I-44 and I-55.

I now have completed the entire length of US Route 34, I-27, and I-44. I-25 is completed south of Douglas, Wyoming, and US82 is completed west of Wichita Falls, Texas. I entered a lot of new counties and saw a lot of amazing things! New Mexico is a beautiful state! Don't miss out! I have always loved Colorado, but now New Mexico is another state I have found to be lovely. Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and Cloudcroft each had their own unique beauty.  And I can easily see why Georgia O'Keeffe feel in love with the beauty of the Abiquiu area in north-central New Mexico. The drive on US 84 north from Santa Fe is an unforgettable one.

In April, I took a trip across Pennsylvania, the Delmarva Peninsula, and the Carolinas before coming home through eastern Tennessee and Kentucky.  Here is what I did:

• Day 1: Drive to Pittsburgh
• Day 2: Sightsee around Pittsburgh
• Day 3: Drive east across Pennsylvania to Chester
• Day 4: Instead of trying to snap a photo of every Delaware route marker, I drove through Baltimore to clinch I-97. Plans changed due to the rain.  I crossed back onto the Delmarva, went through Dover, and ended up on Chincoteague Island.
• Day 5: Take a break from driving, and hike around Chincoteague Island.
• Day 6: Drive to Charlotte, using the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel.
• Day 7: Sightsee around Charlotte
• Day 8: Drive to the Cumberland Gap area, clinching US276.
• Day 9: Drive home on US25E, I-75, and other highways.

Now, I'm about to embark on another trip to the Carolinas! I'm not in love with the Carolinas or anything; it's just how the cookie crumbled, I guess.  This trip will look like this:

• Day 1: Drive to Huntington, WV on US Route 52.
• Day 2: Continue my clinch of US Route 52 until Cheraw, SC.
• Day 3: Finish the last few hours of the drive to Myrtle Beach, SC. Start relaxing on the beach.
• Days 4-8: Stay along the beach.  One of these days (probably Day 6) will consist of a day-long drive down to Charleston and back, to finish the remaining piece of US Route 52 south of Florence.
• Day 9: Head west to Columbia and Congaree National Park.
• Day 10: Head north to New River Gorge National Park.
• Day 11: See the New River Gorge Bridge, and drive north to Cleveland, OH.
• Day 12: See Cleveland and Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
• Day 13: See a couple more shorter hikes in the National Park, then drive home.

The odd thing about this impending trip is that it's not focused on routesnapping at all.  I will probably get some random photos for the website, but they will be new and improved replacements to existing photos. I couldn't predict the list of routes that might get new photos; we will just have to wait and see!

Here is a list of trips I took before this website really got going.

• Flew to SF Bay Area I, Jan 2014
• Drove to St. Joseph MO to kick off my national route photo collection, May 2014
• Drove to the Alabama coast then took a massive detour west to Pearsall, TX, Oct 2014
• Flew to SF Bay Area II, April 2015
• Drive to Columbus through Indiana I, May 2015
• Upper Peninsula via Wisconsin, July 2015
• Minnesota State Fair via Wisconsin, Aug 2015
• New England Road Trip, Visited all 6 states, Oct 2015
• Omaha via I-80, Feb 2016
• Columbus Ohio II, Feb 2016
• Flew to Seattle, March 2016
• Columbus Ohio III, June 2016
• Southwest Wisconsin Day Trip, Oct 2016
• West Virginia and Toledo, Ohio, Oct 2016
• Drove to Gulf Coast II, plus detour to Kissimmee and I-75 through Georgia, Oct-Nov 2016
• Columbus Ohio IV, Feb 2017
• Grand Canyon-Zion-Arches-Las Vegas, Apr-May 2017
• Eastern Iowa, June-July 2017
• Southern Illinois I, July 2017
• Flew to Salt Lake City, July 2017
• Columbus Ohio V, Sept 2017
• Redwoods and Crater Lake in Southern Oregon and Far Northern California, Early Oct 2017
• Phoenix I, November 2017
• Northeast Wisconsin, December 2017
• Traverse City I, March 2018
• Southwest Indiana, April 2018
• Drive to the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Oregon, via Glacier NP and home via Yellowstone, Aug 2018
• Southwest Ohio, October 2018
• Southern Illinois II, Nov 2018
• Drive to the Gulf Coast III, clinching I-55, I-12, I-24 and most of I-59, Jan 2019
• South-central Michigan, March 2019
• Wilmington NC (flew to Raleigh), plus the "South Carolina detour", July 2019
• Northern Iowa, Sept 2019
• Eastern Canada, Sept-Oct 2019
• Eastern Illinois, October 2019
• Around Lake Michigan, August 2020
• Southeast Ohio, March 2021
• Detroit and Michigan Thumb, April 2021
• Virginia Road Trip, April 2021
• Southern Illinois III, Sept 2021
• Los Angeles Area, flew to LAX and saw Joshua Tree and Channel Islands NPs, Oct 2021
• Tour around Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, Feb 2021
• Cedar Rapids, May 2022
• Colorado Tour of All 4 National Parks, Aug/Sep 2022
• Exhaustive Tour of Northeast Ohio, Oct 2022
• Phoenix III, Nov/Dec 2022
• Traverse City III, May 2023
• I-96 Clinch, July 2023
• Xenia Ohio, August 2023
• Northwest Ohio, October 2023
• Iowa Interstates, Feb 2024
• Dubuque Long Weekend, Feb 2024

I don't know about doing long writeups of all of these different trips. But I will try to keep up when I go on future trips!  A big trip is coming in April, so I will be sure to write a reflection about is here when the trip is complete!

On June 19, I took a long day trip to clinch Illinois Routes 108 and 96, and to ride the Kampsville ferry!  The Kampsville ferry is a free ferry maintained by IDOT, for getting cars across one of the lowest and largest stretches of the Illinois River.  See more photos on my pages for Illinois Routes 94, 96, 108, and 5, among others.  I also got a new photo for US136 in Iowa, since I poked my nose into Keokuk to see the southern end of US Route 218!

Every winter (and pandemic), I like to do some impromptu Illinois highway clinching.  As winter conditions are unpredictable and often problematic to travel, I don't plan winter road trips until a couple days in advance, when I can have faith in the weather forecast for the upcoming weekend.  As the weather forecast for this upcoming weekend looks absolutely fabulous for February, I'll be embarking on a trip to southern Illinois and western Kentucky this weekend!  I'll be completing my clinches for more than ten Illinois state highways.  Some of these clinches will be finishing a piece of the highway that I'm missing; some will be full drives from one end to the other!  Stay tuned in the next couple weeks; I'll have some new photos for everyone.

Life has been a whirlwind this month, but I wanted to quickly mention on this blog that I completed a trip to Ohio from October 7th to the 12th.  It started with a meetup with friends in Columbus, and it continued with an extensive scouring of the highways of northeastern Ohio.  I bit off much more than I should have been chewing with northeastern Ohio; the high density of routes gave rise to a lot of stopping and a longer time elapsed than I anticipated each day.  I exhausted myself trying to spend three days on northeastern Ohio; I should have added a fourth day.  Nevertheless, I did get a route shield photo for every route I set out for.  I have one last trip to northwestern Ohio and the Lake Erie islands, and my Ohio route image collection will be complete!

On September 4, I flew home from a 10-day trip to Colorado involving all four national parks within that state.  That means 4 new pages are coming to the national parks section of the site.  It also means I got some new signs for the national collection.  It isn't a whole big slew of new signs and pages for the site, but it's something!  The trip overall consisted of a flight to Colorado Springs, renting a car, and driving in a big circle around central and southern Colorado.  Look for new pages for a few US highways that pass through Colorado, and of course, pages for the 4 new national parks!  

I don't know why I act like the new state with full coverage coming to the site is some kind of Michigan.  If you've watched the Instagram or the update blog, it's becoming very apparent that the new state is Michigan!  This post is late, but three weeks ago, I took a trip all around the state of Michigan, reaching the Keweenaw Peninsula, Drummond Island, and Alpena!  This trip included both peninsulas of Michigan, which is a dead giveaway that I used the majestic Mackinac Bridge at one point.  The point of this trip across Michigan is to finish "routesnapping" the state; this is to say, that I finished my collection of route marker photos.  I now have a photo of one example of every marked state, US, and Interstate route in Michigan.  I have also now entered every single county in the state of Michigan, thanks to a couple detours I took on the way home from Alpena.  County clinching is now completed in Illinois, Iowa, and Michigan, and state-level routesnapping is now completed in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan.  For context, when the routesnapping is completed for a state, that's when I decide to add that state to the website.

On top of this, a new trip to a non-Midwestern state awaits, and I'll get a few contributions to my national route collection there.  More importantly, this new trip will provide loads of new content for the National Parks portion of the site.

My day job is about to take up a lot of my time, so I don't have a lot of confidence that I'll be working on the site very much in the near future.  But stay tuned for a complete set of content for the state of Michigan, and for several new National Parks to be added sometime in September or October!

Now don't get carried away; I haven't traveled every inch of roadway in the state of Iowa. My quest as a roadgeek is to snap a photo of the route markers for every route in the state (state routes, federal routes, and Interstates).  Well, as of this past weekend, I have done just that!  I now have a shield gallery that includes every route in Iowa.  It ended up consisting of 119 photos, though two represent routes that have been decommissioned since I started the collection.  In other words, if you seek to routesnap Iowa like I have, you'll need to take 117 photos across the state.  On this trip last weekend, I also clinched all the counties in Iowa!  County clinching is a secondary goal for me, but I still completed the state of Iowa.  It is only my second state where I've been to all the counties, after my home state of Illinois.  I suppose it won't be any big surprise which state will have content added to the site, after all.  But can you guess which state I'm adding after that?

A link to my completed Iowa shield gallery is here: ​https://flic.kr/s/aHskyCvBZy